After years of accusations from brick-and-mortar businesses that it gave the seller preferential treatment, one of Amazon India’s biggest sellers, Appario, will stop selling products on the marketplace, the American company announced on Monday. For years, Amazon granted a select set of vendors, including Appario and another company called Cloudtail, preferential treatment in order to get around Indian rules.
In August of last year, Amazon, which has insisted it doesn’t treat any sellers differently and abides by all regulations, agreed to part ways with Cloudtail. Since 2017, Appario, a joint venture between Amazon (AMZN.O) and the Patni group in India, has listed products on Amazon India.
The JV will continue, but Appario will stop selling items on Amazon, the U.S. company stated in a statement. “Partners have decided that Appario… will cease to be a vendor on amazon.in, and amazon.in/business within the next 12 months,” the statement’s spokesman said.
The partners will keep looking at new business options, such as assisting organisations in India in expanding their web presence.
Almost 35 of Amazon’s more than 400,000 vendors made up about two-thirds of its online sales in India at the beginning of 2019. At that time, Appario and Cloudtail were responsible for 35% of the platform’s sales revenue. In April of this year, as part of investigations into claims of anti-competitive activities such promoting favoured vendors and providing precedence to listings by certain, India’s antitrust regulator conducted raids on Cloudtail and Appario offices.
Amazon has pledged to investing $6.5 billion in India, a crucial development market, but it confronts a number of legal obstacles there, including tighter investment laws.
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